One angle I don’t see in the press, about these two expansively-lauded, overlooked-freakmama-originator-certified reissues of the former Ms. Miles Davis’ first two albums: the enticement of social discourse. Yes, you get bumped, crunch-pumped grooves ridden by Betty almost as far as the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” (across the Sahara sans watering holes). Yet under the sweat lies an uncertain persona better visualized as the first album cover (hot pants, blouse, a shy smile) than the second one (Different all right, in a space-age stripper outfit she dares you to deny). “I said I’m wigglin’ my fannnnay,” Betty rasps; that’s the best card she can play. A male voice laughs in disbelief, “Get down, hey.” That’s the best he can muster. And the song’s title/chant, “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up,” sums up the situation.

Betty’s no Blue Angel, been there done whatever. Her “raunch” falls far from the certainty and control heard from Blowfly or Millie Jackson in her toilet-squatting-record-cover phase. Betty puts herself on the line, no different than any other woman at the bar, in the club, and the man might recover from his laugh and buy her a drink or someone could stumble into him and he’ll flash indignant and she’ll wiggle herself back to the dance floor and maybe try again, maybe go home. Like Michael Jackson (and Jello Biafra), Betty played no instruments, hooting, honking and clicking her parts to her players, assembling these transient emotional moments out of air. Even on her emphatic and triumphantly kinky “He Was a Big Freak,” what she did to Señor Freak she did, past tense. What happened to him? What happened to them? Is he the reason she’s out on the dance floor? Play it again. Maybe this time you’ll wiggle her in.